The First Days of Man, as Narrated Quite Simply for Young Readers

by Frederic Arnold Kummer

"Look, Mother Nature," he said. "Your Ape-People have all been eaten up."

"You are wrong, Sun," replied Mother Nature. "Adh and the ape woman he has taken for his wife are still in the valley. He was the only one who had learned to think, so the others were of no use and I had to get rid of them. Before long the children of Adh and his wife will fill the valley with a race of Men, and from there they will spread all over the Earth."

Adh did not go with the others for two reasons. The first was that they did not like him, because he made them afraid of him, and so they went away without him. The second reason was, that Adh's wife had a tiny baby boy to nurse and take care of, and it was easier, to stay where they were, than to wander off through the jungles. Now that all the others had gone, Adh managed to find enough roots and nuts to keep himself and his little family alive.

Soon after the others had left, it began to rain, and every day the cold rain beat down on Adh and his family and drenched them. Even their grass nest under the boughs of a thick tree, was turned into a pool of mud and water, on which the sun never shone to dry it and keep it warm. Cold and Rain were making the new Ape-Man suffer, as Mother Nature had told them to do. Adh, as he wandered about the valley hunting for a little food, tried very hard to think of a way to keep himself and his family comfortable, but no new ideas came to him. Occasionally he managed to catch a young bird, which he greedily devoured, but they were very scarce and hard to find.

"Look at the stupid creature," laughed the Sun, peeping for a moment through the heavy rain-clouds. "He hasn't sense enough to find a hole in the rocks, where he would be dry and warm."

Mother Nature did not answer. Instead, she waited until she saw Adh climbing over the rocks at the upper end of the valley, searching for the nests of wild birds he sometimes found there. Then she called Cold to her.

"Blow your hardest for a few moments, Cold," she said.

Cold puffed out his cheeks and blew a freezing blast down the valley, and all the falling drops of Rain turned to bits of ice, like hail, which cut Adh's shoulders and arms and back, and hurt him, in spite of his thick coat of hair. To escape from the storm, he ran beneath some overhanging rocks, and suddenly found himself in a little cave, its floor covered with soft dry moss. Here he was quite safe from the hail and rain, and he was very much pleased.

While he was standing in the cave, Adh suddenly had another thought. He wished that his wife and child were with him. And no sooner had he thought of them than he dashed out of the cave, and forgetting all about the hail and rain, he ran to the nest in the grass where they lay trying to keep warm, and brought them as fast as he could back to the nice dry cave. And this cave was Man's very first home.